One 15 hour bus ride later....

click on photo to blow up and read

...and I'm in Rwanda. The ride should have been 12 hours (by car it's more like 7-8 hours) but the bus had three flat tires. You can't even imagine how bumpy this ride is, and I took an overnight one so I did not sleep! Waking up at the border to go through immigration at 4 am was also not pleasant. I think I'll fly back...

The sign above is posted in the bathroom at NFT, a human resource company where my company shares an office (by share I mean we have one tiny room that we cram into). No peeing on the seat, written in multiple languages in case you don't understand.

Kigali, the capital, is a big change from Kampala, it's very nice. I've heard people say that it's "Africa light," ridiculously nice and clean here with very solid roads) now just weeks after arriving in Kampala. I had just found a place to live and had met a few people when I was asked by my work to come over here. I’ll be here for a month and I'm supposedly an MFI (micro finance) "expert" in trying to get a program running with a cool micro finance organization. Apparently in April they have a memorial week where no one does any business and everyone just remembers the genocide, which I’m sure is tragic.

Rwanda is sort of the opposite of what I expected. I think I really have a skewed perspective in general of Africa because I never spent that much time in major cities like this in my past visits. But Kigali in particular seems like a 1^st world city. But they go one step further, when you have someone like Kugame for President you can just make things happen more easily – there’s no plastic bags allowed in the country and this is enforced. There’s also a cleanup day on the last Saturday of the month and you can be fined if you don’t send someone from your household to represent you and help clean. This is taken very seriously, I'm not sure what to do as a muzungu (white guy).

I was also surprised that a lot of people, even most maybe, at this point don’t speak French here. While many restaurants and roads have French names , it does not feel like a Francophone African country. English is probably more common, and everyone seems to speak Kinyarwanda. But it’s weird not knowing which language to start in when you great someone. It seems like a lot of people that were forced to go abroad in the genocide times learned English and in addition to not being huge fans of the French here, there is a strategic and economic advantage for Rwanda to join the Anglophone East African block. But it’s a strange mix here, they drive on the right, but you can feel a British influence here, while economic monetary conversions are made to dollars.

In my first weekend here I played in a huge annual Frisbee tournament. Before coming to East Africa I didn’t know that ultimate Frisbee was even a thing.  I assumed it was just a hippie white liberal arts college’s thing but this tournament had more than just British, French, and American players, there were people from Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, and of course Rwanda. There’s a social aspect to the game that distinguishes it from soccer, basketball, or other sports. There’s a whole lot of running involved, which I don’t mind, but some people are seriously into the game and are a little more intense than what I can tolerate. Tennis seems to be a lot bigger here in Uganda (and soccer too) so I’ll probably start to seek that out.

I haven’t had a chance to blog as much as I want because internet is so ridiculously slow and I haven’t bought a modem for home use. When I do have internet, I can't really download things, or even watch YouTube videos. Can you imagine, Friday afternoons at the office at the office and you can't watch YouTube videos?! 

I'm off to Gisenyi for the weekend to do some work at the Congolese border

Until then,

Akesselfish

a quick photo shot

Here's that monkey from my last post (well ok, probably not the same exact one, but they all look the same to me and I see them pretty often), and me out in the field with a co-worker and some new clients after a recent solar installation.

Uganda

The minute I stepped off the plane and smelt that familiar burning trash smell I knew I was back in Africa. This time though, stepping into the taxi on the “passenger” side, I realized I was in a different region, because that’s where the driver sits (I continue to screw that up). The British colonial system of driving on the left seems strange, and so does hearing English (I’ve only previously visited French speaking African countries). Just 5 days after arriving, I also have realized how hard it is to get around the bustling and sprawling city of Kampala. Biking will not be an option, walking is too far, and driving a car, while possible, is pretty scary around here with the amount of people going everywhere every which way at most hours during the day. So I’ll take the infamous boda boda for now, which is also pretty scary, but maybe my best option to get around.

I did not have the chance to get over jet lag as I started at my new position at Fenix International the very next morning after I arrived this past Sunday late-night. I’ve been living at the office in a guest room while I get my bearings. It’s a very interesting eclectic group of new co-workers. Some are British, some are Ugandan, and a few of us are from the States. Several staff, both U.S. and surprisingly Ugandan, are really into ultimate Frisbee, which I joined in for a pick-up game. It felt sort of surreal playing ultimate Frisbee in Uganda and then people talked about getting pizza after the game and I for a minute forgot where I was. Some moments it feels like I am just in any other metropolitan area minus the crazy animals and dust everywhere.

I did my first “road” trip the last two days for work going to the lovely city of Jinja (yes sounds like Ninja), where the river Nile ends (or rather the source is found, which is weird because every other river in the world flows in the opposite direction I think). I had a crazy 2 days – went to an enormous sugar plantations owned by some Indians, a Virginian missionary’s house, met a hunched back crazy old Jewish white dude who was convinced he’d met my co-worker somewhere (he hadn’t), got  a flat tire driving with my co-workers several hours in the bush, went to a club where no one danced -dozens of Ugandans were there staring at the England-Brazil friendly soccer match, ate some amazing local food and then some amazing Indian cuisine another night, and drove for hours on some of the bumpiest worst roads to get to these tiny villages to talk to them about the Ready Set.

Overall, things are going well, but I have no idea where I’m going to live yet and I have very little orientation of this city yet. What makes matters worse in part is that the numbers for street addresses in Kampala are not necessarily in order (2, 3, 4, etc.). Much more to write but I’m off to explore Friday night in Kampala…Oh, and a monkey walked by my desk the other day (it’s a half inside/half outside cool type of office).